cedichou
- 22 comments
- 2 likes given
- 4 likes received
Bio not provided
@mengwu @DadeSokoloff I'm not sure what you mean by "consistency" here. If you are in an area that is further away, it will take time for any car (cab, or limo) to get to you. 45mn it will be.
Knowing that the fare is legit and/or that the cab is taking you for a ride: you don't have google map on your phone?
Reviewing cab driver: you do it already, it's called tipping.
Will the cab show up on Fri/Sat night? Uber will show up, because they'll charge you double the regular price (which is already higher than the cab). So "consistency" here really means: paying for what you get. If you're wllling to pay more, you'll get better service. But that's a complementary value propostion, not something you want to 'eradicate' cabs for.
If Lyft is an actual ride sharing mechanism, then it can't offer that consistency. If it's a gypsy cab disguised with a pink mustache, then maybe it can..
@mengwu @cedichou Nobody is forcing anyone to take a cab. People get drunk because they are human. And nobody is forcing you to take care of them: they just hail a cab and go home.
I do hope cabs have some way of making the person who pukes pay for some of the damage he creates. But I would expect it to be rather complex. When you puke on the carpet of your hotel room, they can charge it to your credit card. But the cab does not take a deposit. Maybe they should.
But again, that's a different debate.
@mengwu @cedichou Of course they are a necessity and a social good. It's nice to have DD or friends to pick you up, but you may not stick to the original plan, hang out with someone else and do you really want to phone your friends at 2am because you're too drunk to drive home? If you can do that regularly, you have VERY good friends.
But my point was: a drunk guy puked in Goldberg's cab, and that inconvenienced poor Goldberg. Well, it can happen in a limo as well. If the service you are giving is bringing people home at the end of the night, it will happen. It might be that in a higher margin service (limo vs taxi) you can forfeit the income if you have to take the car out of service to be cleaned and scented. But the reason why you get better service is not because you need to "disrupt" (or "eradicate") the cab industry, it's just that you are in a higher margin business.
I fully agree with your point on public transit, but that's a different debate.
Nothing of substance has been cut? In what world do you leave? In the city, the SFUSD had to cut drastically many services (class reduction, furlough days, school buses). Of course, most of the cuts has been on the back of poor people, so an entitled twit like you wouldn't have noticed.
An elementary school student would tell you why the "bad" on your list is bad. Maybe you should attend elementary school again. The bad on the list is bad because it's underfunded. California spends fewer on those elementary schools than 35 other states. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/21/4579408/california-falls-to-35th-in-nation.html That's why they're "bad". Because people (like you) find they spend too much in taxes, and don't want to pay enough to fund education.
Roads are bad? It's kinda ironic that you asked your friends in Seattle how good they have it. Ask them to drive to Portland for a laugh. And anyway, the reason roads are bad is: there isn't enough money to pay for road repairs.
I would never think that "cab drivers have it too good." Yes, they'd like to be paid at the end of the day. Gee, I wonder why? First, the only time you have to wait two weeks to get paid is when you have your last pay check in your hand. Second, most employees don't have to front the expenses. That cab, somebody has to put gas in BEFORE it picks you up. Would you front out of pocket one month of the expenses of running your business? And yes, most drivers need the cash in hand to pay their own bills. Some people have enough liquidity to cover two weeks or two months or two years. But cab drivers? They don't exactly look like they have that luxury.
So somebody picked up a drunk guy in your cab, and the guy puked. Well, at least that drunk guy did not drive home and get in an accident because a cab was available to him. Would it happen in an uber car? I don't see why it could not happen. One of the services that cab and town car provide is to free people from driving for a night out of town. Uber might avoid this through price discrimination, but then let the cabs be! They provide a social good.
@bgoldberg @ioowilly Well, ioowilly does have a point though... if you look at the life expectancy at age 65 (data here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2011/022.pdf) you'll see that over forty years, it went from 15.2 years to 19.1 years. So it's 3.9 years of added life in retirement, not 15 years. The "retire at 65, die at 70" did not really happen then as it doesn't now.
Also, infant mortality did drop significantly over the forty years, from 25.2/1,000 in 1963 to 7.2 in 1998 [how is that one percentage point???] to 6.5 in 2008. This big drop does not explain all the increase in life expectancy, but there are other opportunities to die young. Car fatalities went from 50,000/year in the 70s to 10,000/year now. Homicide rates are dropping. Etc.
@Shaun Oh, you did not read the article? Or my comment? It was about a police lockdown of an entire neighborhood, which happens extremely rarely. As a matter of fact, I've never seen one myself in San Francisco.
You know what's fishy? If the killer use case is security, then why do 80% of the menlo park neighborhood use it _before_ being exposed to the police locking out the neighborhood. They were using it for no reason, but now, when a one-in-a-million event happens, it all makes sense?
There is a big misunderstanding here: a negative result is an acceptable (i.e. publishable) research outcome. There is no need for a specific repository for negative results. Honestly, I don't see how this adds to google scholar, which provides already with a social network for scientists (you can follow specific researchers) and the discovery tools to identify papers of interest ("My updates" tab).
@bgoldberg @cedichou Do city employees have less of a ground to point out fallacies? You realize that the title of your post includes: "time to grow up" don't you?
@bgoldberg @cedichou Actually, quite a few posters in muni mentioned that a) 700,000 trips are taken daily on muni; b) that muni was required for commute longer than your 2 miles; c) that your "idea" of using $20mil for the eldery was especially ridiculous, since that's ALREADY what muni is spending on paratransit.
Also, it's a fallacy to infer from the fact that women, minorities and young people are liberal that liberals are women, minorities and young people.
Highly ironic that Bryan Goldberg, who just penned a very juvenile 'muni must die' piece, tells anyone to grow up.
Also, fascinating that it stereotypes liberal as women, minorities and west coast. No east coast? Has he heard of, what's the name of that city again, New York City? Maybe he just can't spell Massachusetts. Also, didn't he see the last election results where outside of the south, Democrats won everywhere?
And the patronizing attitude! Readers of HuffPost are white, male and old. So they must be tricked, I tell you, tricked! in reading the HuffPost, the publication that "piss off most of America."
@kingkaufman @bgoldberg Well, it's easy to put some number to see that the proposal of Bgoldbert is just ballooney: MUNI already provides $20million/year of its budget to people with limited mobility. http://www.sfcta.org/content/view/277/97
Since what bgoldberg is talking about is in addition to this existing cost of $20million, well, his $20million won't be enough.
@bgoldberg @njyx Well, MUNI costs taxpayers $600 million/year (according to your note). Also according to your note, public transport in NYC costs $6.4 billions.
Let me do the math for you, Einstein: $6.4 billion is 10 TIMES MORE than $600. You are welcome.
@Todd Dunning Because I care who you vote for and how old you are.
"Let’s put aside the fact that, if recent events in Chicago are any guide, describing Obama as the candidate of schools, unions, fair pay or any combination of the above is something of a stretch. And let’s sidestep the fact that the word “environment” doesn’t even appear on the Obama campaign website’s issue list.
Let’s instead focus on the part that made me almost shatter my MacBook screen: the line about an “out-of-touch millionaire” who has just declared war."
On fair pay, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_of_2009, opposed by Romney, signed into law by Obama.
On unions: yeah, Paul, you must be right, Romney will be friendlier to unions.
On the environment: that's very honest arguing of you, Paul, Obama lists Energy in his issue list (including "clean energy"). Plus, you know how the issue list is curated, right? By importance of the issue to the site's audience. Then again, you must be right, Romney will be friendlier to the environment, it's not like big oil is backing him.
Also, the stanza is NOT describing Obama this way, just noting that Romney has declared his intention to significantly change the status quo on these items (and that's accurate).
Why is Romney at "out-of-touch millionaire" in Romney's own words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B9xCCaseop4 (summary: 47% of Americans are lazy moochers).
Then I stopped reading as you slammed your laptop. There's a reason I don't subscribe to NSFW. Even for free here, I lost interest. If that's the future of journalism (with jokes), then the future of journalism is petty and I did not see the jokes.
the offline maps have been around for ever. I use them often when I travel. It existed on the N95 and later on the N8. Not sure what is getting you excited there.
How long will the first day glitch impact FB's stock price? I mean, if FB's price is still off due to a technicality and investors haven't taken advantage of it, why is it that wall street does with their high speed trading infrastructure and their arista switches?
John Edwards? When is this political chatter going to end? Is this a tech blog, or some DC gossip rag?